Synopsis: A camouflage wearing, bike helmeted figure driving a gold
hearse is picking people off in a small Texas town with a nail gun. Amongst
those killed, whilst almost random as a killing spree at first, are builders
involved in a gang rape of a young woman some time before. Could the events be
connected?

Watching The Nail Gun Massacre, it's a slasher film which invaded a small
Texas town and cross pollinated to create a bizarre mutant. It's a notorious
film which you can't just call "so bad it's good"; those type of
films, outside of film fandom, would be strange as a concept for a casual
horror fan to digest, likely to put many off, but something like The Nail Gun Massacre is a more
imposing film to try to appreciate, the drastic tonal shift from a serious
opening involving rape to the farce it becomes enough to put many off it before
you get to the moment after moment of utter ridiculous scenes, dialogue and
production issues on display. With the exception of that opening, which is
jarring to the rest of the film, that sense of being more strange than most
films of its ilk is why I appreciate it more. It's what I'd call "catastrophically
weird", a rare breed that stand out for how strange they are because of
their numerous technical and logic issues as they are for the odd good virtues
they have. Works with so many bad ideas alongside good ones, aspects sometimes
like here that cannot be defended in the slightest, and yet such a compelling
bombardment of things outside of conventional human behaviour let alone film
character logic that they're surreal by accident. Noticeably, why they're
rarer, is that unlike a film like Birdemic:
Shock and Terror (2010), which have one or two memorable traits but are
mostly sluggish experiences that need a group viewing or alcohol to work, nearly
every minute of these movies are constantly wrong footing you and far more
interesting (and entertaining) as a result.

For me a "bad" film
isn't enough in being funny in its flaws as it eventually loses any interest.
Instead there should be such a density in illogical aspects that you'll find
new ones over multiple viewings, which The
Nail Gun Massacre has in spades from the film crew being visible onscreen
from their reflections in a car door to the hodgepodge of Whitey Thomas' frenzied synth score against the diegetic sounds onscreen,
like the inexplicable rifle firing sounds in an open woodland scene that had to
be weaved into the film's world when the individuals firing the guns near their
shooting area couldn't be shut up by the production crew. The fans of this film
legitimately love it and a lot of this is that, like another catastrophically
weird film Things (1989) from
Canada, it's so out there in its ramshackle tone that The Nail Gun Massacre, which is mainly a series of random killings
by nail gun - not even in fatal areas but even death by nail in elbow or
stomach - strung together by a slasher film revenge plot, does have a manic
lunacy to it. In terms of slashers films, a horror subgenre I can be unpredictable
in my opinions on per film, The Nail Gun
Massacre is one of the more entertaining examples because it never gets
slogged into the predictability of many others due to this tone, and is such a
weird beast to experience only over eighty minutes.

It helps as well that the late
director and creator Terry Lofton,
realising mid-production the problems he was facing (that he needed to shot drastic
amounts of new footage to splice in, that people as mentioned were firing guns
nearby mid-filming, that cast members became unavailable or had to be replaced
by his own mother in one of the more infamous scenes), and went with the
punches, adding intentional humour and absurdity to the tone. Thankfully, he
didn't start deliberately making a bad movie, a scourge of modern cinema, but
continued to make what he wanted to be the next Texas horror film after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974),
"cheaper than a chainsaw" as one memorable tagline stated, whilst
accepting any flaws that came up as part of the film's flavour. Baring the
serious first sequence, which is uncomfortable to sit through as it's done as a
serious and (actually carefully done) scene of sexual violence, you can easily
view the rest of The Nail Gun Massacre, a
completely separate film,as having
its tongue firmly in its cheek whilst never giving up on trying to be credible
as a horror movie, even if it still failed, something which is absolutely
applaudable.

Technical Detail:

Another factor is that, like a
lot of these American independent horror movies, they still manage to be apt
documents of real lo-fi Americana even when they're following the scripts of
horror plotlines or this incompetent. The verisimilitude found from having to
use local actors or, as mentioned, even the director's own mother (who was the
actual store owner of one of the locations) has an immense effect in giving the
film more to admire even if the original intentions are found wanting. The
actresses cast to do nude scenes yet look like women you'd actually cross on
the street at that time in Texas with mid eighties perms and Bridget Jones knickers, the same
applying to the men including one now immortalised onscreen in one of the most gratuitously
long scenes of the film of his bared buttocks thrusting back and forth dead
centre on camera.

Even if the plot's a shambolic
mess, devolving very quickly into a series of random kills and characters who
appear and then disappear, what I found myself interested in more was the
grungy reality of a film that had to rely on non-actors and locations you
normally don't seen in higher budgeted horror movies from the time instead. The Nail Gun Massacre is far more
rewarding in its humorous asides intentional or not, of the girlfriend
unimpressed by her new boyfriend taking her to a cafe for $1.19 grilled cheese,
the actor who has to push himself back even when supposed to be playing dead on
top of a barbecue he's just landed on in his death scene, the playfully
sarcastic relationship between the denim wearing doctor (Rocky Patterson) and
the Sheriff (Ron Queen), our central characters following the killer's trail of
caresses, or the general sense of a local American town of the time that you
rarely got in the glossier Hollywood films. For every gaffe technically or in
content, the homebrewed tone helps support The
Nail Gun Massacre for all its mishaps by unexpectedly turning it into a
document of the place the production was shooting at that time, just one that happens
to be wrapped up into a slasher film.

The only gaffe I have issue with,
and it could be with how the film is preserved on physical media, is how the
audio and music together on headphones is a nightmare at points. Whitey Thomas' music for every head
scratching decision, (infamously the piano cords undercutting one piece of the Sheriff's
dialogue of example), is also amazingly creepy in its literal screaming tones
and drones. The campiness of it doesn't detract from how openly ghoulish it is
even in this absurd content. Even the ridiculous robot voice for the killer,
whilst making bad puns that can't be heard properly most of the time, still
have an appropriate madness to it. The full audio mix however actually gave me
a headache, which in some ways added to the current viewing but isn't
necessarily needed to appreciate the film.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

The Nail Gun Massacre definitely sits in a place that feels like
Texas but is completely alien to planet Earth in general, the sort of place
where police go to a crime scene but leave the body, telling the bystanders an
ambulance will come to pick it up later in one of many moments of terrible
crime scene management. Where one can ask about the wild butterflies and
killers being on the loose. Rarely do I find "bad" films to have a
sense of anything fun to them because I can't laugh at incompetence and boredom
creeps in; in rare cases like this film, what happens is the equivalent of
finding yourself in a strange world with its own bizarre logic instead, where
even the editing or music is distorted and effecting you. It's amazing actually
how such an erratic film, especially as someone with mixed thoughts on the
subgenre, manages to still work altogether in spite of the glaringly obvious
problem of its mangled production history with extensive reshoots. But a lot of
it, intentional and not, is to do with the fact it's a constant barrage of
weird dialogue, strange plotting decisions and visible production mistakes. Baring
one prolonged scene of the doctor on the phone talking, the film always has
something new to stumble over, placing it above many "so bad they're
good" movies which coast along with only a few wooden lines of dialogue
and mostly blandness. It's probably as much due to Terry Lofton's right decision in being in on the joke that helps
with this, wanting to still make a well made film, helped by its use of film celluloid
even on 16mm, but taking the blows on his chin without issue.

Personal Opinion:

One with precaution unless a
viewing can appreciate this type of cinema on its own terms, but I can't help
but like The Night Gun Massacre.
Rarely do I like this type of cinema but when it's this consistently odd, it
becomes something above being a "bad" film I should laugh at. Instead
it has an appropriate deranged energy that intoxicates me, left dizzy
afterwards but rewarded by that queer feeling alongside the ridiculous
memorable mishaps.

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.